[Ladislaus]

Archbishop Lefebvre:

“It is possible we may be obliged to believe this pope is not pope. For twenty years Mgr de Castro Mayer and I preferred to wait…I think we are waiting for the famous meeting in Assisi, if God allows it.” (Talk, March 30 and April 18, 1986, published in The Angelus, July 1986)

“You know, for some time, many people, the sedevacantists, have been saying, ‘there is no more pope’. But I think that for me it was not yet the time to say that, because it was not sure, it was not evident…” (Talk, March 30 and April 18, 1986, text published in The Angelus, July 1986)

[Viva Cristo Rey]

Mathew, you are right.  All these titles further divide us.  

And the word “traditional” divides us too.  We are Catholics.  

Present day Catholicism of Vatican II is communism. 

[Ladislaus]

Matthew pointed out that I was responding to the wrong thread.  I had conflated the "Who do the SVs have?" thread with this one here, from which all the others link.  I apologize for the mistake.

There are honestly just way too many SV vs. R&R threads going on at the same time, including the two that Matthew started, and I confused one for the other.

[Ladislaus]

There are at least NINE active threads as of 1/3/24 arguing about the Pope question. 

Thus the source of my confusion between the two that you started.  I was looking at your link but then had the "Who do the SVs have?" thread in mind.

[Ladislaus]

Furthermore, we all know what we gotta do. We're talking basic common sense: keep the Holy Catholic Faith ...
...
When did this RANDOM MUSING, this FALLIBLE, PROBABLY WRONG OPINION become so many peoples' identity? When did "Traditional Catholic" become not good enough, or not descriptive enough?

Well, firstly, in the practical order, I don't think anyone, when asked, labels himself "I'm a sedevacantist Traditional Catholic", but simply "Traditional Catholic".  I've never known an SV who used a more extended label.

Here's the thing, Matthew, and I've addressed it already when you've brought this "pragmatic" view up before ... the disagreement is in fact about "the Holy Catholic Faith".  Ideas matter.  Doctrine matters.  You can go to the Tridentine Mass all you want, and use Catholic prayer books, and smell some good incense and listen to melodious bells.  This Crisis isn't just about the Mass or spirituality or practical considerations, but it's about the Holy Catholic Faith.

There are many Traditional Catholics of the R&R variety who are slouching inexorably toward Old Catholicism and are therefore NOT keeping the "Holy Catholic Faith".  That's what this fight is about.  It's not about the "5 Opinions" or even about the precise limits of infallibility "in the strict sense" as defined at Vatican I.

Since when is it OK for Catholics to just start up chapels, seminaries, monasteries, convents without the approval of and subjection to the Catholic hierarchy?  Since never.  This is ALIEN to Catholicism to think this is OK or acceptable.  Subjection and submission to the Papacy is what has always set Catholicism apart from the Old Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox.  When doing Catholic Apologetics vs. Eastern Orthodoxy or Old Catholicism, the core of the argument has to do with the requirement to remain subject to and in communion with the Pope, the Papacy, the Vicar of Christ, and the successors of St. Peter.  There's never been a Pope, a Doctors, a saint, or an actual Catholic theologian who ever taught or believed that the Catholic Magisterium and the Catholic Mass can become corrupt.  There is absolutely nothing Traditional about that belief.  It's only the Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Old Catholics who have claimed that the Papacy has gone corrupt, strayed from the true path of Christianity, and strayed from Tradition.

If you impute this degree of corruption to the Magisterium and Universal Discipline of a legitimate Vicar of Christ, you're gutting the very foundations of the Catholic Church, the very "rock" upon which the Church has always stood.  You're essentially claiming that Our Lord built his Church on sand or mud, and not on a rock.  What kind of "rock" did Our Lord build His Church on if this foundation can shift, can crumble, in short, if the Papacy can lead souls to hell, corrupt Catholic doctrine, corrupt Tradition and Revelation, and where the Public Worship of the Church can become corrupt, a Protestantized bastard Rite of Mass that displeases God and causes harm to souls?

If you toss this out, as many R&R do, what's left of the Catholic Church and the papacy ... some clown walking around Rome in a white cassock?  How do you do apologetics now to Protestants?  "Yes, you must be in union with the Church and subject to the Papacy, since the Papacy is the rock upon which Christ founded and the sure source of unity in faith ... well, except that it's turned to shit and you really should be separated from the Papacy to be united to it."  At that point, the Prot could simply respond, "See, we told you 500 years ago that the Papacy had gone corrupt and had corrupted Divine Revelation, and we separated from the Papacy just as you have."

Don't you see how many R&R are undermining and destroying the very faith the claim to be upholding by attending a Tridentine Mass and using much incense?  Many / most Old Catholics do the same, as a large number of them have retained the Tridentine Mass.  What do you say to them with regard to apologetics?  "Yeah, you have to be subject to the Papacy, but the Papacy has become corrupt, so you should be a Traditional Catholic."  And their response would rightly and logically be, "Welcome to the club.  Better late than never.  We realized that the Papacy had strayed from Tradition and gone corrupt 100 years before you guys did."

THIS IS WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT MATTHEW.  I have no comprehension why some Traditional Catholics don't get this.  People can hold their Tridentine Missals all they like, listen to Gregorian chant, pray the Rosary, be devoted to the saints, etc. ... but then you can find Old Catholic groups that do all these things.  That by itself doesn't qualify as Catholicism, and you can't reduce Catholicism to these practices.

So this battle is PRECISELY about the "Holy Catholic Faith" that you say Traditional Catholics are supposed to be preserving and keeping.

[Stubborn]

Archbishop Lefebvre:
“It is possible we may be obliged to believe this pope is not pope. For twenty years Mgr de Castro Mayer and I preferred to wait…I think we are waiting for the famous meeting in Assisi, if God allows it.” (Talk, March 30 and April 18, 1986, published in The Angelus, July 1986)

“You know, for some time, many people, the sedevacantists, have been saying, ‘there is no more pope’. But I think that for me it was not yet the time to say that, because it was not sure, it was not evident…” (Talk, March 30 and April 18, 1986, text published in The Angelus, July 1986)

But he never changed his mind, he certainly never recanted his, what you call heresy. Perhaps you can point out exactly what, in this his declaration, you say is heresy:


http://www.sspxthepriesthood.com/society.shtml

Declaration
By
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X
Rome, 21 November 1974

We adhere with our whole heart and with our whole soul to Catholic Rome, the guardian of the Catholic faith and of those traditions necessary for the maintenance of that faith, to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth.

Because of this adherence, we refuse and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-modernists and neo-protestant tendencies, such as were clearly manifested during the second Vatican Council, and after the Council in all the resulting reforms.

All these reforms have, indeed, contributed and still contribute to the demolition of the Church, to the ruin of the Priesthood, to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice and of the Sacraments, to the disappearance of the religious life, and to naturalistic and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries, and catechetics, a teaching born of Liberalism and Protestantism many times condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.

No authority, even the very highest in the hierarchy, can constrain us to abandon or to diminish our Catholic faith, such as it has been clearly expressed and professed by the church's Magisterium for nineteen centuries.

"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema". (Gal. 1,8).

Is this not what the Holy Father is repeating to us today? And if a certain contradiction is apparent in his words and actions, as well as in the acts of various Roman Congregations, then we choose what has always been taught, and we turn a deaf ear to the innovations which are destroying the church. The "lex orandi" (law of prayer) cannot be profoundly changed, without changing the "lex credendi" (law of belief). The new Mass is in line with the new catechism, the new priesthood, new seminaries, new universities, and the charismatic or Pentecostal church, all of which are in opposition to orthodoxy and to the age-old Magisterium.

This reform, since it has issued from Liberalism and from Modernism, Is entirely corrupt; it comes from heresy and results in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is thus impossible for any faithful catholic who is aware of these things to adopt this Reform, or to submit to it in any way at all. To ensure our salvation, the only attitude of fidelity to the church and to Catholic doctrine, is a categorical refusal to accept the Reform.

It is for this reason that, without any rebellion, bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of the formation of priests under the star of the age-old Magisterium, in the conviction that we can thus do no greater service to the holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff, and to future generations.

For this reason we hold firmly to all that has been believed and practised by the Church of always, in her faith, morals, worship, catechetical instruction, priestly formation and her institutions, and codified in the books which appeared before the modernist influence of the late Council. Meanwhile, we wait for the true light of Tradition to dispel the darkness which obscures the sky of the eternal Rome. By acting thus we are sure, with the grace of God, and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saints Joseph and Saint Pius X, of remaining faithful to the Catholic and Roman Church, to all the successors of St. Peter, and of being "fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Spiritu Sancto. Amen" (Faithful dispensers of the mysteries of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Ghost. Amen)

[Stubborn]

There are many Traditional Catholics of the R&R variety who are slouching inexorably toward Old Catholicism and are therefore NOT keeping the "Holy Catholic Faith".  That's what this fight is about.  It's not about the "5 Opinions" or even about the precise limits of infallibility "in the strict sense" as defined at Vatican I.

"The strict sense?" Vatican 1 says *that* is the only sense when they said the meaning of dogma once declared must never be abandoned. What you are in fact saying is that there is some other sense that entails meanings not "once declared," contradicting the dogma in the process....while insisting those who maintain the strict sense are heretics.  

What you are claiming is that according to this other sense outside of the strict sense, and based on the never retracted declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre,  that he either only slouched inexorably toward Old Catholicism, or he was a full blown Old Catholic. Which is it?

"Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding." - V1

[Ladislaus]

I'm still awaiting a rejection and refutation of Archbishop Lefebvre, who said the same thing that we're saying:

ultimately I agree with you; it's not possible that the Pope, who is protected by the Holy Ghost, could do things like this.  There we agree; it's not possible, it doesn't fit, this destruction of the Church ...

[Ladislaus]

But he never changed his mind, he certainly never recanted his, what you call heresy. Perhaps you can point out exactly what, in this his declaration, you say is heresy:

Ah, so you quote something from 1974 as evidence for how he "never changed his mind" after 1986.  Logic much?  Nevertheless, no, he did not become openly sedevacantist before he died.  But the big argument for why +Lefebvre wasn't "wrong" for seeking a practical agreement with Rome (to make the "experiment of Tradition" within the Conciliar pantheon) was that things and circuмstances had changed.  Well, things have changed with Bergoglio, and it's been over 30 years since the Archbishop died.  If he had been on the verge of becoming "sedevacantist" on account of Assisi, what would he say about Bergoglio ... where even Conciliar priests are going straight to sedevacantism without any kind of stopover at R&R?

What your feeble and disordered mind fails to comprehend is that, except for a period in the early 1980s, +Lefebvre did not oppose SVism in principle, but consistently said that it was possible.  As he explains in the quotes above, he held back from sedevacantism due to prudential considerations and for fear of being wrong (deferring to the Church's final judgment).

But, as I said, I'm still awaiting your rejection and refutation of Archbishop Lefebvre, because he agrees with US on this point and not you:

ultimately I agree with you; it's not possible that the Pope, who is protected by the Holy Ghost, could do things like this.  There we agree; it's not possible, it doesn't fit, this destruction of the Church ...

Now, of course you're entitled to disagree with Archbishop Lefebvre, but I expect you to show the intellectual honesty to address this quotation and then disagree with it.  But you ignore it out of intellectual dishonesty, where you want to pretend that he never said this, because then you'd have to concede that we were right about this very point that's under dispute here.  You want to have your cake and eat it to, where if WE say A, we're wrong, but if +Lefebvre says A, he's not wrong.

[Stubborn]

Ah, so you quote something from 1974 as evidence for how he "never changed his mind" after 1986.  Logic much?

That's right, he never changed his mind, even if he did, then according to you, he is guilty of heresy for not recanting his declaration, you know, what you call heresy, which means he lost his office ipso facto. It's Divine Law according to you that per cuм ex, an office once lost is lost forever. He was doomed to be shunted off to a monastery in the woods somewhere to finish out his days doing penance per cuм ex.

You are not making a very good case using the one you label as preaching heresy, +ABL, in your attempts to justify sedeism.

[Ladislaus]

That's right, he never changed his mind, even if he did, then according to you, he is guilty of heresy for not recanting his declaration ...

False.  Evidently it's not getting through to you.

+Lefebvre agreed with us:

ultimately I agree with you; it's not possible that the Pope, who is protected by the Holy Ghost, could do things like this.  There we agree; it's not possible, it doesn't fit, this destruction of the Church ...

I've never said that not being sedevacantist is heresy per se.  What I said was that denying the indefectibility of the Church is heresy, which, as you can see above, +Lefebvre did not do.  His reluctance to become openly sedevacantist had to do with the question of lacking complete certainty about how this came about.  He agrees with the MAJOR of our position, just wasn't convinced enough about the MINOR to follow through.  And that's precisely my point, that none of you have addressed, that +Lefebvre agreed with US on this point.

[Ladislaus]

You are not making a very good case using the one you label as preaching heresy, +ABL, in your attempts to justify sedeism.

There really are no words for this.  My point has precisely been that +Lefebvre is not heretical, that he's correct ... and that YOU are wrong.  +Lefebvre does not agree with your heresy.

[Stubborn]

There really are no words for this.  My point has precisely been that +Lefebvre is not heretical, that he's correct ... and that YOU are wrong.  +Lefebvre does not agree with your heresy.

https://www.cathinfo.com/crisis-in-the-church/rr-explain-why-the-old-catholics-were-wrong/msg919936/#msg919936

I said:
It is not I who is my own magisterium, I do not teach, I go by what the Magisterium, i.e. the what Church has always taught. You do not understand it because you have a NO understanding of what the Church's Magisterium even is. The fact is, you have the identical understanding of what it is that pope Francis has.

The Old Catholics were wrong in their belief. You are wrong in your belief. How do you keep the faith without ever having had a pope?

+ABL declared:
then we choose what has always been taught, and we turn a deaf ear to the innovations which are destroying the church.

You declare:
Stubborn, I will pray for your conversion, because, as it stands, you are a pertinacious manifest heretic.  You've been corrected repeatedly that you promote heresy, but you obstinately refuse to retract it.  Of course you're your own Magisterium.  YOU decide what is and what is not in conformity with Tradition, just like the Old Catholics did.  St. Thomas taught this clearly that when you reject the Magisterium as your proximate rule of faith, you effectively make your own private judgment your own Magisterium.

So Stubborn is right and the Old Catholics were wrong, because Stubborn says so ... not because Pius IX and the Vatican Council said so ... but because Stubborn said so.  Got it.  Can you even begin to grasp the absurdity of this?

If I am a pertinacious manifest heretic, then so is +ABL, whose words I essentially repeated. So again, you are not making a very good case using the one you label as preaching heresy, +ABL, in your attempts to justify sedeism.

[Centroamerica]

In my defense, my thread "Answering Objections to Sedevacantism" was only a summary of the same from Bishop Pivarunas and accompanied by video. It was more of a library item not warranting any discussion since very little response could attempt to be given anyhow. It was less of a "thread on sedevacantism" than a reference.

[TheRealMcCoy]

Just because +ABL never declared to be SV doesn't mean that people today must not declare to be SV if it is obvious that there is no pontiff.